“In this kind of fieldwork, you have your reasons for wanting to go to a place, but you don’t always get what you want,” says Curator Ross MacPhee. “Sometimes, though, you end up finding something even more interesting.”

Tens of millions of years ago, the frozen wastes of Antarctica were a temperate zone, thriving with life. Now Museum researchers are looking for the remains of those animals, which may include some of the first mammals.